


the things we said

by baliset



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Minific, a haunted duplex in Bellevue, doomed relationships After they were doomed, doomed relationships before they were doomed, fraught relationships with your teammates, ghost polycules, incineration and instability, like half of these are set in the Hall of Flame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27927367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset/pseuds/baliset
Summary: A collection of minific for a Tumblr prompt list, ft. two Garages in a doomed relationship, Jaylen Hotdogfingers as seen from outside herself, and Pedro Davids taking a drive.
Relationships: Combs Duende/Nora Perez, Derrick Krueger & Jaylen Hotdogfingers, Derrick Krueger/Sebastian Telephone, Mike Townsend/Derrick Krueger, Mike Townsend/Derrick Krueger/Sebastian Telephone/Dominic Marijuana, Pedro Davids & Adalberto Tosser, Sosa Elftower & Derrick Krueger
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. with no space between us

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to caro (oceanics-roar), ell (sonar-taxlaw), jaz (waveridden), mads (socksmaybe), kieren (esiako), and my one anon asker for the prompts!

“I think I hate this game,” Derrick says. It’s the first thing he’s said since Mike found him lying on the mattress in his van, staring at the wall.

“Yeah,” Mike says, his face pressed into the dip between Derrick’s shoulder blades. He doesn’t know what else to say. Bennett Browning is dead, and no one saw it happen because all the lights in all the stadiums went dark so some _peanut_ could yell at the fans for something the players had nothing to do with.

“You don’t mean that,” Derrick says. Not accusatory, just a fact.

Mike frowns. His arm is slung around Derrick’s middle, and he fidgets with the hem of Derrick’s threadbare band shirt, finding a hole and picking at it with his thumbnail. He _doesn’t_ mean it, not all the way, but he likes saying things that make people feel better. Most of the time, that means agreeing with them.

“Maybe,” he says, finally.

“You like it. Pitching, at least.”

“Okay,” Mike says, closing his eyes, his fingers still feeling over the edge of Derrick’s shirt. “I like pitching. I don’t like the part where it might get me set on fire. I don’t like days when people get incinerated.” He pauses, swallows. “I don’t like what happened to Bennett.”

“People keep saying it’s the only way out.” Derrick shifts, rolls over so that his forehead is touching Mike’s, the frames of Mike’s glasses nearly bumping against his face. “Incineration. That’s bullshit, right?”

“Total bullshit,” Mike says. He can feel Derrick’s breath warm against his own face, and his instinct is to shrink away, but he doesn’t. He still can’t meet Derrick’s eyes, though - his eyes slide away when he tries, even though there’s nothing in his field of vision to look at but Derrick.

Derrick’s mouth twists suddenly with an emotion Mike can’t parse. He switches sides so that his back is to Mike again. Mike settles in and puts an arm around him without complaint, listening to the even sounds of Derrick’s breathing until he’s almost certain Derrick has fallen asleep. The only thing that proves Derrick isn’t is the way he catches Mike’s hand and grips it like a lifeline, the gesture so sudden that it startles Mike.

“I don’t want that to happen to me,” Derrick says. His voice is tight. Strained. “Dying like that. In the dark.”

“It won’t,” Mike says, squeezing Derrick’s hand back. It’s a promise he has no authority to make, but it feels like the right thing to say. He likes making people feel better.


	2. after it was over

Derrick has never talked to Jaylen.

Obviously that wasn’t a choice he had to make at first - her incineration was the entire reason he was brought onto the team, so they were ships in the night. After being incinerated himself, though, it was a choice. Not any more or less tricky to do, given the labyrinthine nature of the Trench, but still a choice.

Jaylen doesn’t talk to him, either. Maybe she just doesn’t recognize him, or know that he was her replacement, or maybe she’s also making the choice to avoid him. Derrick doesn’t think she talks to the other Garages in the Trench, either - if she does, they haven’t said anything about it. It’s better that way. Derrick doesn’t want to know.

There was a seed of resentment towards Jaylen inside of him, when he was alive. It’s the same resentment one would feel towards anyone whose shadow they were forced to live in. Sometimes it was fine, that people looked at him and saw a space where Jaylen should have been instead. Sometimes Derrick could live with that burden. Sometimes he couldn’t. When Jaylen gets called out of the Trench, back to the land of the living, the seed turns into a sprout. Derrick is annoyed, and then he’s angry - why do the fans only care about _Jaylen_ , when they know about the Null Team, now? When they know that incinerated players are still playing the game, forever, at the bottom of the ocean? If the fans have chosen to save Jaylen, who’s coming to save the rest of them?

Time marches on in the Trench. More players die. Some of them come with a bruise-dark haze of instability, and they tell stories about how Jaylen gave it to them, about how she’s paying a debt. Then the unstable dead stop trickling in. The fans offer peanuts as tribute, which does nothing but remind Derrick and the other players in the Trench of who is remembered, and who is not. Tillman Henderson dies, and is as insufferable as everyone expected.

When Jaylen returns to the Trench, no one is waiting for her, because no one knows it will happen. Derrick is standing in the Hall of Flame, looking out a window at the ocean beyond, and catches a sudden flash of white light and static behind him in his reflection. There’s a smell of electricity and ozone. He turns around, and Jaylen’s there.

Derrick watches her look around, tuck her hair behind her ear. She tugs on her jersey, watching as the bright yellows and blues leech away and she’s left with the grey uniform of the Null Team. Jaylen frowns for a moment, then straightens her back and offers Derrick a thin smile.

“I guess they need me here,” she says. There’s no recognition in her eyes.

“Someone always does,” Derrick says, his voice flat.


	3. but didn't say at all

There is a switchboard in the Trench now. Or maybe it was always in the Trench, and no one knew it was there until Sebastian Telephone found it, drawn to the buzzing of telephone wires like a moth to lamplight. No one but Sebastian knows how to work it, either, so they can only receive calls when he’s manning it. And they can _only_ receive calls. No outgoings.

Derrick is lying in his shitty twin bed, tossing a blaseball at the ceiling, and when Shaq opens the door without knocking and says “Phone for you” he almost thinks it’s a joke. No one ever _calls_ him. The only people who appear to remember him are all in the Trench, and have been for seasons and seasons. Derrick doesn’t actually remember what season it is now - must be double-digits, for how long he’s been here.

Still. Shaq insists someone’s trying to call him, and Shaq can be an asshole sometimes, but Derrick knows how to tell when they’re joking. So Derrick walks the halls to the switchboard, trailing his hand along the walls to find the arrows and directions different players have scored into the smooth black marble. Hall of Flame this way, Null stadium that way, communal kitchen off somewhere behind him. They keep asking the Monitor for signs, or maybe a map, but when does the Monitor ever give them what they want?

Sebastian is manning the switchboard, as per usual, and glances over his shoulder when Derrick walks in.

“Oh, there he is,” he says, into the receiver pressed to his ear. “Hold, please!”

He vacates his seat, and holds the receiver out to Derrick. Derrick stares at it for a long moment, then takes it like it’s made of glass, only vaguely aware of the sounds of Sebastian leaving the room behind him as he sinks down into the peeling leather office chair in front of the switchboard.

“Hello?” a voice asks, quietly, as Derrick finally puts the receiver to his ear, and the sound of it sucks the air out of the room.

It’s Mike, of course. Derrick would never forget the way Mike’s voice sounds, even after who knows how many seasons. Derrick can feel his heart pounding in his chest - which is amazing, because he didn’t even know it could _do_ that anymore. He wants to tell Mike about the Trench, about how the Garages have found each other down here, about the fucked-up games of blaseball they play. He wants to ask a _million_ things, like how Mike’s doing, how the Garages are, if they remember him, if they’re happy to have Jaylen back, if Mike visits his grave, if he even has a grave. He wants to tell Mike he misses him every day. He thinks he might vomit if he opens his mouth to say any of those things.

“Hello?” Mike asks again.

“Yeah,” Derrick says, finally, swallowing. “Hi, Mike.”


	4. after you kissed me

Derrick’s hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. Mike thinks of running a hand through it, then thinks better, and lets his hands drop to his sides instead. He gets down off his tiptoes, adjusts his glasses, doesn’t think of the way Derrick’s stubble feels under his fingers or the way Derrick’s mouth tastes a little like metal.

“I like your band,” he says. He’s said it before, but it feels worth saying now, with the rest of the Moonlight Warriors bustling around them and packing up instruments.

“So you’ve said,” Derrick says, with a self-sure grin that looks at home on him. Mike has never seen him smile like that at practice, or during games. Maybe because this is what Derrick is good at, and blaseball just isn’t. Or because these are the people Derrick loves, and the Garages aren’t.

Mike snorts. “It’s the truth.”

“You won’t like them once you meet them.”

“People say the same thing about the Garages.”

“I have to imagine people would say it about any band in Seattle.” Derrick laughs, and sips from the open water bottle that’s been dangling from one of his hands. Little rivulets of water run out of the corners of his mouth and down his chin. Mike can’t help but watch them.

“I bought a CD,” Mike says, fishing it out of his messenger bag. “Will you sign it?”

Derrick grins again, and gestures for Mike to hand it over. “I’d be honored.”


	5. while we were driving

Pedro doesn’t talk after the game is over, except when they’re shaking the Dale’s hands. He doesn’t talk in the locker room, or on the way out, or once he’s climbing into the RV that is also the home he carries on his back. Tosser followed him out to the parking lot, hoping for - hoping for _something_ , he doesn’t know what, and ends up getting in the passenger’s seat. They don’t discuss it, it just happens.

They’re stuck in post-game traffic trying to get onto 83 when Pedro drums his fingers on the steering wheel and says “I’m _fine_.”

“I didn’t ask,” Tosser says, leaning back so he can prop his feet up on the dash.

“You wanted to,” Pedro says. The black spot of instability on his sternum keeps ebbing and flowing, its edges moving like it’s alive. “Everyone did. But - listen, I’m fine. It’s just one day that I have to live with it.”

“One eclipse day,” Tosser says, pointedly.

“Okay, one eclipse day.” Pedro runs a hand through his hair, tugs the elastic band free of his ponytail. “I’ll be okay.”

Tosser hums. He watches Port Discovery pass slowly by in the window, a gaggle of children gathered outside. People have stopped bringing their kids to games, this season. That’s probably for the best. None of them had to watch Murray Pony going up in flames right in front of them, or watch the instability spread to a member of the home team who’s been playing since Season 1.

The children’s museum fades from view and Tosser is left with the concrete roads and bridges that mark where the city streets fade into the interstate. He looks away from the window, and back at Pedro.

“You should stay for dinner when you drop me off,” he says. “I’ll make whatever you want.”

Pedro’s shoulders hunch, almost defensively, and Tosser expects a deflection. Maybe Pedro’s in pain - no one really knows what instability feels like, except the people who have had it. Or maybe Pedro just wants to be left alone. No one enjoys feeling like whatever they eat for dinner might be their last meal.

“Yeah, okay,” Pedro says. “Shakshuka?”

“Whatever you want,” Tosser repeats, and means it.


	6. in the kitchen

Mike has trouble, generally, talking to other blaseball players. Even the other Garages, sometimes. He always feels like he’s cheating his way into the conversation somehow, like he was never meant to be in a room with people who play the game better, or study it more intensely, than he does. Like a party he wasn’t meant to be invited to.

It gets much easier, he’s found, if the players are dead. Which is why, when he steps out of the shower to find the words **YOU’RE OUT OF COOL RANCH DORITOS** finger-painted in the fog of his bathroom mirror, he has no problem getting dressed and walking into the kitchen and saying “Okay, which one of you was it.”

Sebastian and Derrick share a look. They’re both hovering around the breakfast bar, and Derrick’s face is carefully neutral, but Sebastian’s lip is twitching, and he looks like he’s in danger of bursting into laughter at any second. _Corpsing,_ Mike thinks, and immediately wonders if that’s in bad taste. 

“Which one of us did what?” Derrick asks.

“Which one of you came into the bathroom,” Mike says, “while I was _showering_ , to write on the mirror that we’re out of Doritos.”

“Well, it’s not like we can write a grocery list,” Derrick says, his eyes lit up in the way that means he’s fucking with Mike. He’s always been good at that - playing into a bit with a completely straight face. “None of us can hold a pen.”

“You _are_ out of Doritos, by the way,” Dom chimes in, floating through the pantry, his arms and torso emerging only halfway from the wooden door. He looks like a swimmer breaking the surface of a stagnant lake, his hair blown around his face in some invisible breeze.

Mike pinches the bridge of his nose. “The Doritos are not the point, here.”

“Did it scare you?” Sebastian asks, with genuine concern. Mike knows him well enough by know to know that he’s capable of dropping a bit the instant he thinks it’s hurting someone - but also to know that Sebastian is much sharper than he looks, with a much more morbid sense of humor than most people expect.

“No. It was about Doritos,” Mike says. “But you could just _ask_ me for the Doritos.”

“But it’s more memorable if we put it in writing,” Derrick counters, his eyes still glittering. It should be annoying. Instead, Mike feels a sudden surge of fondness. It’s good to see Derrick - maybe not as happy as he was when he was alive, but at least enjoying himself.

“You’re out of cereal, too,” Dom observes, most of him back inside the pantry.

Something dawns on Mike, then. He slams his hands down on the breakfast bar, and his voice cracks and raises an entire octave as he yelps “None of you can even _eat_ Doritos!”

Sebastian breaks, then, floating another foot or two higher in the air as he dissolves into laughter. Derrick puts a hand over his mouth to hide the fact that he’s laughing too, and Mike swears he hears Dom chuckle from inside the pantry. For that single moment, it’s easy to forget they’re blaseball players - _dead_ blaseball players - and see them just as people who exist here, people who share a life with him in this shitty duplex in Bellevue. Maybe one day, Mike thinks, they will be.


	7. when you were scared

The Null Team doesn’t sleep during the siesta.

More than that - they can’t sleep. They keep playing the game, keep wandering the black marble halls of the Trench, even though the lack of new arrivals and the peanut tributes trickling to a stop surely means everyone in the material plane is doing better things. It should be peaceful, should be restful, but it’s just the same shit as always, with more lying down and feeling adrenaline buzz in your bones instead of closing your eyes and getting a full night’s rest.

The bags under Derrick’s eyes are so dark against his pale skin that they look like permanent bruises, like someone broke his nose. He doesn’t look at his own reflection anymore. Sleep used to come to him the same way breathing did, used to be the easiest thing he could do, and now it’s like his body only remembers how to do it - or that he needs it at all - for minutes at a time. He spends the same amount of time in bed, but he spends it differently - replaying old Moonlight Warriors songs in his head, writing increasingly incoherent new ones, tracing the fractal scar left over from his incineration in the center of his chest. Sometimes he squeezes his eyes shut and just listens to the sound of the Trench around him, to the footsteps in the hallway and the hushed conversations in the rooms around him.

He’s listening to the murmur of voices through the wall next to his shitty twin bed when it’s swallowed up by footfalls, close and getting closer. They stop right outside his door and carry straight into Derrick’s room. He doesn’t roll over to see who it is, even when they climb into bed with him and slide under the weighted blanket to lie with their stomach to his back, leeching his body heat.

“Nora says the Monitor told her that everyone’s playing again, up there,” Sebastian says, brushing hair away from the nape of Derrick’s neck so he can rest his face there. His nose is freezing cold. Derrick stiffens for a moment, but doesn’t shake him off.

“Yeah?” Derrick asks.

“Some kind of exhibition cup.” Derrick can feel Sebastian’s lips forming the muffled words against his neck. “D’you think - they wouldn’t kill people during an exhibition, would they?”

“I don’t know,” Derrick says, honestly. He’s never heard of the ILB doing exhibition matches before. He doesn’t put it past the gods or the league officials to make the stakes higher than they have to be.

“I hope not. Imagine getting incinerated during the off-season.” Sebastian gives a humorless little chuckle. “Maybe things’ll go back to normal here, while everyone else is playing.”

“ _Normal_ ,” Derrick says, almost-but-not-quite poking fun.

“You know what I mean. Maybe we’ll get to sleep.”

Derrick runs the edge of the weighted blanket between his fingers, and closes his eyes, even though he knows it won’t do anything. He shifts against Sebastian, letting their bodies slot together like puzzle pieces.

“That’s pretty optimistic,” he says. Sometimes he feels like he won’t ever get to sleep again. Tonight was shaping up to be one of those times, until Sebastian came in without knocking.

“What can I say,” Sebastian says, wryly, and kisses the back of his neck. “I’m an optimistic kind of guy.”


	8. that i wish you hadn't

Everything in Miami is too bright and too loud, even in a solar eclipse. Mike has to wear his tinted glasses whenever the Garages play there, the ones with the lenses that filter blue light. He could get away with skipping this game - he’s not pitching it - but he stays anyway, because it’s Day 80, and Derrick pitches on the 5′s and 0′s.

Mike sits in the dugout with earbuds in, watching the team warm up and Derrick run pitching drills until the Dale filter out onto the field and Malik steps up to plate. Mike watches Malik strike out, then Teddy, until he’s distracted by Derrick sliding in next to him on the bench.

“It’s too fucking hot out here,” Derrick says, taking his ball cap off and pushing his hair out of his face. There’s a hunted look in his eyes that Mike sees now and again during eclipse games, more often now that Shaq and Tiana are gone.

“Are you nervous?” Mike asks, knowing what the answer is.

“Me?” Derrick asks. He grins, but there’s strain behind it. “Never.”

“It’s the _Dale_ ,” Mike says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> derrick died on day 80 and the garages lost 0-9. :)


	9. when i was crying

Watching Sosa cry is strange - magma floods from her stone eye sockets and pools on the ground around her, cooling and forming tiny spires of her tears. Derrick didn’t recognize it for what it was the first time he saw it. He’s gotten better at reading Sosa’s body language in the season since he got here, which might be for the best, because Sosa is speaking less and less these days.

“Hey, Sosa,” he says, lingering in her doorway. His own voice sounds like it’s coming from farther away than it really is, shot through with static like a radio that can’t quite grasp the signal it needs. Derrick wonders how long it will be until he loses that signal entirely.

Sosa looks up, and says nothing. Small strands of magma are running through her fingers, glowing angry red.

“You want to talk about it?” Derrick asks. He makes his way towards her slowly, stopping when he’s close enough to feel the heat that radiates off her still-cooling tears.

Sosa gives him what he recognizes as a capital-L Look, and points meaningfully at her throat, several times.

“Fair point,” Derrick says. He pauses, rocks on his heels, unsure of what he’s thinking until he says it out loud. “Weren’t you on the Magic? You can’t, I dunno, conjure up something to help you?”

Sosa straightens, her stone mouth pressed into a tight line. She stays that way for a long moment, with an unnatural stillness that Derrick is used to seeing by now. When she moves again, it’s abrupt, sketching a sigil in the air with one long finger. There’s a smell like the aftermath of fireworks burning, and a slim, white card appears there, floating in midair.

“Well, alright,” Derrick says, leaning forward to squint at it. “We can get somewhere with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spindlewheel cards like the one in this microfic are made by sasha reneau and you can find more info on them [here!](https://www.teacabbage.com/spindlewheel-1)


	10. too quietly

The Monitor posts the pre-playoffs update of the Season 6 scores on the bulletin board sometime overnight. Nora is one of the first ones there to look, her eyes scanning immediately to the part they always scan to first, and she can’t help but let out a little “Oh, what the _fuck”_ under her breath.

“What’d you say?” Combs asks, coming up behind her.

Nora turns to look. Combs looks disheveled, like they just got out of bed to check the scoresheet - and they probably did. They’re still in the undershirt and boxers they wear under their Null Team uniform, their hair a shaggy mess of split ends and half-done braids that hangs almost to the floor.

“Look at the scores,” Nora says, not wanting to spoil Combs from having the moment of raw disbelief she’s still in the throes of. She shifts aside so they have room to see.

Combs looks. They actually look for longer than Nora does, silently, their mouth pulled into a pensive frown. Then they see exactly what she wanted them to, and let out their own “What the FUCK!”

“I know,” Nora says, a giddy laugh bubbling up in her throat. “I know!”

“ _80_ wins?”

“And a 21 game win streak!”

“80 _fucking_ wins!”

Nora laughs again. Combs laughs too, and lifts her in their arms before she knows what’s happening, spinning her in a circle with her feet off the ground. When they put her down, they kiss her. It’s quick, but that doesn’t mean it’s not passionate, and Combs is still grinning when they separate themself from Nora and take a step backwards. If this is the way just the two of them feel, Nora thinks, she can’t imagine what the mood is like among the still-living Crabs on the immaterial plane.

“80 fucking wins,” Combs says again, breathlessly, in abject disbelief. “How’d they do that?”

“Something you taught them must’ve stuck,” Nora says, grinning back at them.


End file.
